LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

the predicament of in-betweennessevery citizen should be ‘a Lebanese first’ (71), that is, open-minded enough tobe respectful of other Lebanese irrespective of their cultural allegiances. Onlythe distinction between these two types of identity would guarantee collectiveloyalty to the idea(l) of Lebanon as a pluralistic yet unified nation. 10But unlike Kasem, and as may be gleaned from the novel as a whole,Alameddine does not view the war in retrospect as ‘a legitimizing event … thecrucible in which the nation of Lebanon was born’ (Alameddine 70). Nor doeshe see wars in general as having any positive effects. The character Mohammad,who comes closest to representing the author himself, quotes James Baldwin bysaying that ‘[p]erhaps the whole root of … the human trouble, is that we willsacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos,crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in orderto deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have’ (124). Despite itsatheistic, stoical and/or cosmopolitan spirit, this statement is neither antinationalisticnor anti-religious; it simply bewails the drowning of human life,happiness and freedom in the quagmire of jingoism and religious fanaticism.Like AIDS, war destroys one’s life, claims the lives of loved ones, and kills largenumbers of people at random.Despite their different behaviours and attitudes, the conduct of all theLebanese characters in the novel is tinged by the war. The physical exilesamong them exhibit what Edward Said calls ‘contrapuntal consciousness’, thatis, the inevitable double or plural visions which exiles acquire as a result of beingaware of two or more cultures (1994: 366). While Mohammad’s perception isdominant, Samir’s and Makram’s contribute to the novel’s polyphony. Theirhomosexuality aside, Mohammad (a Muslim), Samir (a Druze), and Makram (ofa Christian Maronite father and a Muslim mother) represent not what thereader may think of as the (stereo)typical attributes of their religious sects butrather three possibilities of personal reactions to the war situation. Familialrelationships, psychological makeup and physical distance from Lebanon shapetheir nationalistic sentiments or lack thereof in various combinations.Mohammad, born in Beirut in 1960, eventually overcomes his ‘childhood ofcomplete and utter confusion’ (Alameddine 8) after his family relocates to andthen back from West Africa to Lebanon. But he is soon pressured to join hisuncle in Los Angeles, and so leaves in 1975 at the age of fifteen. Financiallyinsecure and dismayed by his father’s unwillingness to support his education atan art school in San Francisco, he never returns. After gaining financialindependence as a painter, he ‘lost [his] roots’ (122). Samir Bashar, born inWashington, DC in 1960, moves back at the age of seven to Beirut, and leavesin 1978 to study at a university in Paris. In 1983, he returns to Washington, his‘hometown, so to speak’ (81), to pursue a PhD in history at GeorgetownUniversity. After resettling in the US, he continues to revisit Lebanon— 195 —www.taq.ir